Gena Pemberton is a Black woman who has spent her career diagnosing a way forward in corporate America.
She spent more than two decades in leadership roles in accounting, operations and human resources at large companies such as Johnson & Johnson. But now, at 50, she doesn’t really know what’s next.
She was head of inclusion and impact at Omnicom Health until the company eliminated her position in July 2025. She has been without a full-time job since, despite applying to dozens of jobs a week and lowering her seniority and pay expectations.
“I’ve never been unemployed this long,” she said.
Ms. Pemberton is far from alone. Black professionals across the country have faced a triple whammy in the job market in recent years.
The disappearance of positions related to diversity, equity and inclusion in large companies has greatly affected black women; a wave of federal layoffs that eliminated hundreds of thousands of jobs has had a significant impact on black workers, who are disproportionately represented on federal payrolls; and the slowdown in white-collar hiring rates has been particularly acute for some black businesspeople who do not have elite networks as extensive as those of their white and Asian peers.
When unemployment among black workers rises sharply, it can be a harbinger of trouble for everyone. Rising unemployment among Blacks and weak hiring rates in the business services sector are signals that the job market is in worse shape than the overall unemployment rate of 4.2 percent suggests, said Jared Bernstein, who served as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Joseph R. Biden Jr. Hiring, for example, is proceeding at a pace analogous to the dismal years following the Great Recession, when overall unemployment was closer to 9 percent and unemployment of blacks was about 15%.
“When the economy sniffles, black unemployment sniffs,” he said.
In 2025, black women experienced much greater job losses than other women, particularly college graduates and public sector workers, according to data analyzed by Valerie Wilson, an economist. And figures from Revelio Labs, a workforce analytics firm, show that U.S. employers have cut more than 2,600 positions since 2023 with “diversity” or “DEI” in job titles or descriptions.
After exceeding 8% in November 2025, black unemployment fell to 6% in August. Then the latest jobs report showed black unemployment returned to 7% in September — the fastest monthly rise since 2012, not including the brief pandemic shock. This rate is almost double the 3.6 percent rate for white workers.
“It’s definitely a cause for concern,” Kevin Hassett, usually ebullient director of the White House National Economic Council, said in a CNN interview.
Employment levels for Black women ages 20 and older have been volatile, declining to 10.3 million from a record high of about 10.7 million in 2023. Jobs in nursing, health care and other social support services have held up better for Black women, reflecting the situation in the labor market as a whole. But at one point, the decline in employment for black women accounted for more than half of the job losses for all women.
Employment levels for black men also fell from a peak near 10 million in 2025, but have recovered slightly since this spring. And even though black men experienced a decline in manufacturing jobs, they fared better than black women in the “professional and business services” sector, gaining more than 100,000 net jobs. Black women lost their jobs in the sector.
Unemployment figures are based on a household survey, and economists warn against reading too much into monthly variations. This is particularly true for estimates for individual demographic groups, which are based on relatively small sample sizes.
Ms. Pemberton, who lost her job at Omnicom Health last year, can’t even technically be considered unemployed since she worked as a consultant while looking for a full-time position. However, these incomes were relatively unequal.
According to Department of Labor guidelines, individuals are considered employed if they worked during the middle of the month in which the employment survey is conducted. This includes part-time jobs as well as independent, on-demand or contract work.
The financial cliff Ms. Pemberton experienced caused a strain not felt since her childhood, she said, when her parents lived paycheck to paycheck some years.
“I basically emptied almost all of my savings — not just my savings account, but now I’m dipping into my 401(k), which means my future is affected,” Ms. Pemberton said. “I’ve looked for jobs that probably have a lower title and lower salary, because I need to figure that out.”
The use of 401(k) accounts for hardship withdrawals has more than doubled in recent years, driven in part by long-term unemployed people dipping into their retirement savings in times of emergency.
Vina Morris, president of the New York chapter of the National Black MBA Association, a nonprofit network, said people who simply read the headline about the Black unemployment rate underestimate how much the situation has deteriorated since the early 2020s, when efforts to remove long-standing barriers to Black leadership in business were in vogue.
“We lost partnerships,” Ms. Morris said of corporate donors. “And we lost the funding.”
It doesn’t help, Ms. Morris added, that artificial intelligence has obscured and cluttered the job application process — and that in response, many managers have reverted to old-fashioned hiring tactics: choosing those who seem trustworthy through word of mouth from friends and social media.
“We’re not in a lot of these rooms, we don’t always have the same friends,” she said.
President Trump, during his first term, often praised low black unemployment rates and, during his second term, argued that his tough immigration policies would benefit black Americans by preventing low-income immigrants from stealing “black jobs.” Economists say, however, that there is little evidence to support this claim and that black jobs have long included higher-income careers. They note that some of Mr. Trump’s policies, including government job cuts, have hurt black workers.
Melinda Emerson, an assistant professor at Rutgers Business School who launched a workforce development company, said the federal government’s reduction in support for black and minority entrepreneurs has been a huge blow to her community.
“It’s not just about unemployment,” Ms. Emerson said.
She’s seen many Black entrepreneurs in her network have their government contracts canceled, she said, while accountability measures like “dashboards” for the diversity of your relationships with suppliers and customers have disappeared across corporate America — all of which has led to a drying up of sales for many owners of color.
Ms. Emerson accused the Trump administration of fomenting a negative culture toward the professionalism of people of color. She argues that the government’s racist language – suggesting that diversity and excellence are at odds – has carried over into corporate values and decisions.
“Many of our clients’ budgets have been cut, so we simply don’t have the opportunities we used to have,” she said.
Emerson has experienced a 50% decline in sales since 2023, which she attributes almost entirely to anti-DEI sociopolitical winds. She says some of the pay rates offered are barely above her team’s operational costs.
“When your biggest client calls you,” Ms. Emerson explained, “and says, ‘Melinda, I have this project for you, and I know we should give you $70,000 for it, but now I have $20,000, will you do it?’ I mean, come on, but those are the kinds of conversations we have.
Some labor market experts remain hopeful. Cantrell Dumas, a senior fellow at the Joint Center, a think tank focused on economic outcomes for Black Americans, saw reason for optimism. Black labor force participation is relatively strong, and the reversal in black unemployment from its 2025 peak shows that things can turn around again.
“The problem is not that black workers stopped looking for work,” Mr. Dumas said. “That’s because more black workers entered the workforce and the jobs weren’t there to satisfy them.”
Ms Pemberton believes her next job will be linked to her previous roles in financial analysis.
“It’s like no one even wants to hear the acronym DEI anymore,” she said.
Gn bussni
